


Settling

by Kahvi



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-26
Updated: 2009-02-26
Packaged: 2017-10-12 19:50:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/128429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahvi/pseuds/Kahvi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lister does find Earth eventually, and tries to settle down. But how can you make a home for yourself in a place where everything you've come to consider "home" in the last decade or so is missing?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Settling

**Author's Note:**

> A few ideas and lines within are blatantly stolen from the frankly delicious mind of [](http://roadstergal.livejournal.com/profile)[**roadstergal**](http://roadstergal.livejournal.com/), in the hope that she will forgive me.

He had tried living in London at first, relishing the crowds and the endless oceans of people, until the nightmares started, and he couldn't stop thinking about drowning. It was pathetic, really – Lister was well aware of it – but after all those years away, he didn't fit in on Earth anymore. Liverpool held too many memories he didn't know how to deal with and Manchester just felt wrong, so he had tired to compromise by settling in a village nestled cozily between the two. Life in a small town agreed with Lister in many ways - it was a close-knit community, and you were never really alone - but if you started picking up men in bars, all your neighbors would know about it instantly, which is why Lister never did.

Not there.

There was always some excuse or other to go to Manchester. The city didn't exactly have a thriving gay scene, but Canal Street had its charm, even those few times when the 'C' had not been stolen off the sign. There was a bar or two that wasn't full of twentysomethings and guys desperately trying to pretend they were still twentysomethings with their tops off, if you knew where to look. Lister tried not to look in the same place twice, although he wasn't quite sure why. If anyone noticed him, they wouldn't care, and on the off chance he'd meet anyone he knew, these places were innocuous-looking enough for him to plead shock and ignorance. Which he would, to his shame, because if word got out that he were gay, life would get far too complicated for his liking. And besides, he wasn't. It was just, sometimes...

...Sometimes, like tonight, he would skulk into whichever discreet, nondescript pub he hadn't been to for a while, pick a seat at the bar, and wait.

Lister never initiated anything himself. It was easier to let them come to you; when they did, you knew you had a sure thing on your hands. He didn't really care what they looked like, so long as they didn't make his eyes water; it wasn't like they were women, after all. He liked a good, strong body, and a solid pair of hands that could push away the fact that the air smelled wrong, and the food tasted too much like food, and make him feel like himself again, just for a little while. Just for a breather. Women couldn't do that, nor could drink, for whatever goited reason. But this could. If it worked, don't knock it, right?

Sighing, he ordered his first, non-alcoholic drink (an overnight stay would be harder to explain than an extended visit), absent-mindedly rapping his knuckles against the chipped wood of the bar.

 

* * *

 

"Wouldn't have thought men like you frequented these places." It was fifteen minutes after last orders, and Lister really should have been on his way home already, but no one else had approached him all night. He took the bait, turning to face the man who had spoken.

"Do I know you?" When the man's face came into view, Lister nearly choked on his words, until the moment of false recognition passed. Murky brown-green eyes, yes, and nostrils you could get lost in with a map and a grade-A GPS-system, but his hair was the wrong shape and color, and his voice was deep and gritty. Not a hint of smeghead nor space hero in there. Lister stared at the man dumbly, until he coughed and turned away.

"Sorry," he mumbled, "I'll just be on my way…"

"No," Lister yelled, a little too loudly, catching the man's sleeve. Something akin to desperation gripped him; he hadn't seen a face even remotely like that in years, which reminded him that it had been years; years since the crash, years since he'd buried her body… "I'm sorry. Just… you get all kinds in here, y'know."

Carefully, the man nodded, sitting back down. "I didn't meant to imply anything. I suppose I didn't know what to expect."

"First time here?"

The man nodded again. With his face angled more towards the light, the differences multiplied, in stark contrast to the image that had already developed in Lister's brain. Lines in the wrong places, a too-high forehead, little snippets of unfamiliar body language. "First time anywhere," he said, hands fumbling at the bar, aching for something to do with themselves.

"I could tell." Lister smiled with genuine sympathy, remembering his own first time. A virgin then, so to speak. Oddly appropriate, that. "I'd buy you a drink, but…" He gestured at the clock in the corner, apologetically.

"Yes, well." A smile ghosted across the man's face, followed by some undefined emotion.

"Wanna get out of here?"

"Yes." That relief though, there was no mistaking.

As Lister got off his seat, the bartender pulled him aside.

"You sure about him? Looks like something the cat dragged in."

Lister grinned, and slipped into his coat. "Used to have a cat. He ran away."

"Aye," the bartender mumbled, as if this explained everything, "they do that. They do."

 

* * *

 

Being different didn't make the man unattractive, Lister mused, as they hurried down the pub's steps, buttoning their coats against the late autumn wind. Far from it; the weathered face and the well-toned body gave him a rugged look that was far more appealing than Rimmer's reedy, brylcreemed frame ever had been. They turned a corner, and the man looked down at him, expectantly. Lister pushed his thoughts away, and smiled, encouragingly.

"Erm… what happens now?" He looked somewhat like a stray dog, begging for a chance to be taken home.

Lister shrugged. "Nothing you don't want happening." The next thing he knew, he was being pulled eagerly into an alley, while agile fingers fumbled for his belt. "Steady," he choked, heart beating faster in anticipation of just what those soft, wet lips nipping at his neck might be nipping at later. His fly was open now; Lister exhaled in a shudder at the first, hesitant feel of touch on his aching cock, letting his head fall back against the uneven brickwork.

Something like a sob escaped the other man. Frowning, Lister tried to catch his eye, but he had fallen to his knees now, a head of oddly mussed iron grey hair all that was visible. He was trying to pull Lister's cock out of his trousers, but his movements had grown clumsy and erratic, and Lister sighed.

"Hey, now..." Lister reached down to pat one of the shaking shoulders, gently, but the man was already moving away, wiping at his mouth, though nothing had so much as reached the edge of his lips.

"Sorry," he mumbled, spitting at the ground, and stumbling backwards. Lister grimaced. He'd seen it more than once before. Man his age (man my own age a bitter voice inside him chided) doing something like this for the first time; a fish plucked out of water and pretending to be used to it.

Their eyes met for a second or two, and then Lister was tucking himself in, looking politely away as the poor git made his escape with relative dignity. He only turned when he heard the footsteps hurrying away. There he went; a hunched, hurrying figure, and the last reminder Lister would ever have of the only home that made sense to him anymore.

Clenching his fists, Lister watched him go.

 

* * *

 

The sullen-looking middle-aged man blinked his narrow, disapproving eyes, chapped lips twisted in a scowl. His brow furrowed slowly, revealing a complicated network of what anti-wrinkle-cream manufacturers discreetly referred to as a 'fine lines'. Well, there was a fine line between smeg and bullshit, wasn't there? Thinning hair the color of dull metal that had just about started to rust had been smoothed down to a dull, amorphous shape, and his nostrils twitched, as though he were secretly trying to inhale something. He glared at Rimmer.

Rimmer glared back. "You disgust me," he spat out.

Unsurprisingly, his reflection did not reply.

Holograms aged. This was old news to Rimmer, who had, after all, gone through the process more than a dozen times during his ghastly stay on Rimmerworld. Most of that time, however, he had been stuck in a dark cell with no one to observe him, much less care. It really was worse when you had to share it with other people, who did not know that you would snap back to thirty in a handful of decades, to start the process all over again. Getting old was such a private matter; it was hardly anyone else's business that Rimmer had to get up to pee at 3 AM every night, or that his erection, now, would sometimes not return after the second time he'd come. It seemed downright rude for his face to be broadcasting it like that.

The Wildfire's computer, which had never seen an Ace grow old, had dumped him in this smeg-forsaken place, and jumped off to find fresh hard-light meat. She knew what Ace was; a very specific set of skills and features, and Rimmer did no longer fit the mold.

It had never occurred to Rimmer that surviving could make him a failure.

 

* * *

 

Holograms did not technically need to eat or sleep, though they still felt hungry, cold and tired. Rimmer spent many nights roaming the cold streets of ancient England cursing JMC for that brilliant piece of engineering, before he finally managed to get a job. It was more than a little disconcerting to settle down in a world centuries less advanced than the one you came from, and finding that you had no useful skills or knowledge whatsoever. If only he'd paid more attention to Lister's rambling about classic 21st century sports, he might at least have made some money in the betting shops, but his mind was a blank on the subject. All he could remember was the London Jets historical victory over the Seattle Lions in 2158, and that wouldn't happen for 150 years. Beyond that, his skill set consisted of three full sentences in Esperanto, none of which were terribly useful if you weren't on holiday in Benidorm or moon-hopping in the Saturn system, a random sampling of atronavigation facts that would not make sense to anyone until interplanetary-class cruisers were invented, and a full working knowledge of every intimate detail of all known types of vending machines.

Thankfully those had been invented. After five months, he was branch manager of the Manchester office of Vend-O-Quick, and only very rarely did he take out the wig from its secret compartment in his closet, put it on, and go out cruising for… whatever he could find.

It wasn't how the wig made him look – in all honesty, without the suit, it made him look ridiculous. No, it was how it made him feel. Somehow, with the wig on, Rimmer was no longer a sad, middle aged, dead failure; he was a suave, sexually charged charmer and raconteur. Women came to him as easily as men; he'd stopped being picky about gender rather quickly, as Ace. For one thing, he'd never really been good at stopping people from having sex with him, if they really wanted to. He wasn't sure if that made him gay or not. He'd never really given it much thought. He'd fretted about it endlessly, of course, but he'd never really thought about it. After a while, it got to be more of a routine than anything else, and Rimmer kept it up on this primitive Earth because he routines, more than anything else, had always been what kept him going.

Then, after a miserable evening of unpaid overtime, he went temporarily insane.

 

* * *

 

Rimmer hadn't planned on going out – it was past closing time for the pubs, anyway, and he resented picking up in the gaudy bars where everyone was pretending to be half their age, and getting away with it due to bad disco lighting and alcohol consumption. After hours of mind-numbing paperwork, all he wanted was a greasy, at best unsatisfactory take out, and a decent night's sleep. He didn't know why he looked in the window of the pub he was passing, or why, having done so, his palms grew cold, and icicles formed in his spine. Nor did he quite understand why he slipped inside and stood there, just past  
the threshold, as the barman rang last call, staring at the eerily familiar face at the counter.

It wasn't Lister, of course. Lister was millions of light years away, in another dimension. An alternate, then, without the dreadlocks and that ever-present grin. It was odd to see a Lister-like face that wasn't smiling; like a burnt out light bulb. And, of course, there was  
another major difference; the Lister Rimmer knew would never have come to a place like this… Mechanically, Rimmer shrugged out of his coat, and walked over, taking a seat next to him.

"Wouldn't have thought men like you frequented these places," he mumbled, disguising his voice as best he could. If he couldn't be Ace, he could at least be someone other than Arnold Judas Rimmer.

"Do I know you?" The man turned and stared, brown eyes looking vacant and searching, as if deciding whether or not to slug the git who had accosted him.

"Sorry," Rimmer mumbled, already regretting having set foot in there, "I'll just be on my way…" He had barely moved when a hand caught his sleeve.

"No!" Rimmer blinked at the alternate, startled. "I'm sorry. Just… you get all kinds in here, y'know."

Rimmer nodded, carefully. So he came here often. Why was that somehow so appealing? "I didn't meant to imply anything. I suppose I didn't know what to expect."

There was a twinkle of a certain something in the alternate's eye. "First time here?"

Rimmer nodded again. Without the wig, he felt oddly naked; part of him wanted to slip of the stool and run out of there, but another kept him firmly bolted to the worn leather seat. "First time anywhere," he said, not sure if it was entirely a lie. He didn't know what to do with his hands - the damn things seemed to have a life of their own whenever he got nervous. Why was he nervous?

"I could tell." When he smiled, the resemblance was uncanny. Rimmer swallowed, following the paths of the unfamiliar lines in that very familiar face, fighting back the urge to run his finger over them, as if they could explain everything, like some form of human Braille. "I'd buy you a drink, but…" He gestured at something Rimmer couldn't see. A clock, maybe. Rimmer's attention was elsewhere.

"Yes, well." The faces of all the men he had screwed, or blown, or jerked off paraded through Rimmer's mind. He resented the conclusion their brown-eyed, dark-complexioned faces were trying to draw.

"Wanna get out of here?"

"Yes," Rimmer said, silently cursing himself.

 

* * *

 

Cold air rushed against them as they made their way outside, making Rimmer wince. He would never get used to Earth's wild fluctuations in weather. Total climate control was still a good century away, but from what Rimmer had heard, Earth had never taken to it. How could people stand it – never knowing what the day would bring? He pulled his coat closer to, trying not to think about the man walking next to him, with steady, heavy steps. Looking down, he saw a pair of well-kept leather boots, which had stopped walking, and raised his eyes towards what turned out to be an encouraging smile.

"Erm… what happens now?" He asked, lamely. He'd never actually had to think about these things before. Sex had just sort of… happened. There had been no intent brown eyes staring him down, no anticipation. No having to act, rather than react. Rimmer's ears were filling with white noise; he saw the alternates lips moving, watched him fumble in his pocket for a cigarette, and something within him snapped. Reflexes he hadn't used for months took over, dragging that warm, impossible, living body into the cool darkness of the alley, and licked his way down his neck, tasting sweat and real skin, and a spicy sort of tang. The world, as it always did when his hindbrain took over, had become one of sensory impressions and bodies and movement. Automatically, his hands sought Lister's cock through his trousers; smegging hell, his hands remembered the shape of it from when he'd been in a body so much like that one, too long ago, too far away...

He didn't realize he'd stopped moving until a hand fell to his shoulder, and a soothing voice mumbled token words of comfort. No. He still had some dignity, dammit.

"Sorry," Rimmer mumbled, spitting at the ground, stumbling backwards, knowing there was a wall behind him, but forgetting, for the moment, if he would fall right through it or slam against it. As he righted himself, he met the alternate's eyes for a moment. Two seconds. Too long. What the goited hell had he been thinking?

The man made no attempt to stop Rimmer as he stumbled off, thankfully. The street smelled of questionable food, and Rimmer's simulated stomach, used to regular feedings now, grumbled eagerly. Trying to ignore it, the eyes he could feel at his back, and this twonk-forsaken place in general, Rimmer did not see the low-hanging sign until it smacked into his head. "Smegging, goited, twonking hell," he yelled, feeling at the cut on his forehead with a weary hand. It came away dripping of blood, which fell towards the dirty ground, dissolving into pretty sparkling bursts of blue light along the way.

"Ye haven't learned how to repair mechanoids while ye were out there, I suppose?" The voice, hesitant with wonder, came from right behind him. If he turned, Rimmer mused, they would be face to face. "'Cause I've got one in my shed."


End file.
